


Vulcan Geography

by Kotik



Series: Adult Season Three [8]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Drama, F/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 00:37:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3708737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kotik/pseuds/Kotik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darkness looms as Hoshi is forced to sacrifice herself</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vulcan Geography

Malcolm let out a sigh when the shuttle lifted off. Even though Hoshi would by now already have arrived in Japan, he was still looking forward to getting back to the relative sanity of life aboard the ship. He was feeling utterly numb after trying to disentangle the utter mess that went by the euphemistic term ‘The Reed Family’.

It was still not clear what had made his mother smell the cordite and finally divorce that rotten old scumbag, but in the end it didn’t matter. That she did it was what counted in the end. He was more than happy to leave the sordid details of the actual divorce proceedings to his sister, who would have mum at her place for the time being.

Not leaving anything to chance he had left a generous sum with his old colleague Falks from the days in the section. Like himself, the Dutchman had walked out from the section when it started to become Harris’ personal assassination service and was building up a business in the private security sector.

Not leaving anything to chance, Maddy’s house was now under constant surveillance, because at one point the old man would show up and make trouble. Not so much because he missed mum, but because a Reed, at least one as psychopathic as his father, would not accept the humiliation of being left by his wife. Well, there was a first time for everything.

A beer sounded like a good idea actually, and if Trip was up to it, a jolly good arse-thumping; some pain just to remind him he was still alive after the tedium of the last few days. But then he remembered that today was Friday, so unless she’d given up on being Vulcan, the schedule-obsessed science officer would show up for ‘engaging in sexual relations’.

It was definitely not the most elegant contact with the launch bay grappler in the ship’s history, but Malcolm was too frustrated to care right now. He started powering the systems down while the robotic arm hoisted the shuttle back into the belly of the ship.

Trip was alone on the deck when he walked up the stars.

“Welcome back, pal.”

The engineer was entirely too chirpy for his frustrated mood, but he endured it.

“You look like hell, man. I guess it was the usual ‘fun’?”

“Just a little bit more ridiculous this time,” Malcolm snorted sarcastically. “I’m seriously starting to hope that they mixed up two babies in hospital and I’m actually not related to that dickhead.”

“That calls for a beer, twenty-hundred my place.”

“You’re on,” Malcolm confirmed and turned to go, but was held back. He looked at Trip win a mixture of annoyance and impatience.

“Malcolm, when you get to your quarters. There’s a PADD on the desk. Read that before you do the paranoid thing and start checking security logs.“

He waited a moment for any further explanation, but Trip just gave him a pat on the back and walked off.

Malcolm hoisted his duffel and walked out too.

The walk wasn’t too long as most of the journey was done by turbo-lift. Upon entering Hoshi’s quarters, which were unofficially actually their shared place he could pick up the faint smell of Hoshi’s favorite perfume. He dropped the bag, closed his eyes and inhaled the scent. It was the first positive moment after days of frustration and anger and he enjoyed it for a while.

Remembering Trip’s instruction, he looked for the ominous PADD and found it on Hoshi’s desk. He sat down and started the device and immediately furrowed his brow.  Why had Hoshi taken the rating test for the EM39, the strongest weapon they had aboard this side of the plasma cannons? First he thought it was a joke, but he checked everything and each and every detail was filled-in.

There were two things that caught his attention though.

First of all there was the result. He had spent a lot of time with Hoshi doing extra practice. That was how their relationship had really taken off around the time of the incident with the Klingons on that deuterium mining colony. But he had not realized that he had improved this much. He could think of at least five people in the security department who had scored substantially lower.

And another one who had scored lower was her examiner. Trip had passed the instructor rating about a year ago, so he was perfectly authorized to preside over Hoshi’s rating test, but what was the urgency? She could have waited a few days more for him to return, or had she gone to visit her parents with a pulse rifle?

Suddenly he remembered Trip mentioning security logs and he hastily fired up the console, but when the screen sprang to life he dropped back against the backrest, his mouth hanging open.

“Oh my bloody word!”

=/\=

Hoshi closed her eyes enjoying the sensation of the _onsen_ ’s hot water. At least she didn’t need to hear Miyuki’s hue and cry as the hot spring was a fair amount from the house and the bath was sacrosanct. Not even her envious sister or her offended father would dare harassing her here as she enjoyed the first bath in two years in the family’s most prized antique possession. Raising one’s voice in here would be akin to breaking wind in a crowded elevator.

She opened her eyes when a second person glided into the bath – her mother Yuki. Acknowledging her arrival, Hoshi closed her eyes again and continued to enjoy the silence. She didn’t know how long it went on like that, probably ten minutes, when a simple question from her mother grabbed her attention.  

“Are you happy, Hoshi- _chan_?”

“If you ask about my decisions in life – Yes,” Hoshi said her voice calm and even as the place and deference to her mother demanded. “But I can’t be happy that I cannot be here with the man, who means more to me than anyone else.”

“Do not be too hard on your father. He has always sought shelter in the old ways for fear of the unknown. I have reminded him that even the old ways require that respect between children and their parents is not a one-sided affair.”

“I apologize if I have offended any of you,” Hoshi said and cast her eyes downward.

“The only one you have offended is your sister and she is offended by your very existence.”

Hoshi looked up. Such strong words were not coming to her soft-spoken mother lightly.

“I have always known that you would find your own way in life, and if it is any consolation, you have my support for your decision to change your physique. Whoever performed the procedure is certainly a master of his art.”

She had to do a double take. In her way of hiding her true thoughts her mother could challenge T’Pol. Such a frank speech was close to being unheard of.

“Father is not as accepting of my decision,” Hoshi said sadly. “I had actually deluded myself into believing he would appreciate that I am now entirely comfortable in my own skin.”

“He speaks about his feeling no more lightly than I do,” her mother replied in her typically soft voice. “And he might start to have problems with his memory.”

Hoshi looked up and to her utter surprise she saw a gentle smile on her mother’s face.

“He seems to forget that he was promised to Akiko Yakumatsu in his youth, but he defied his parents to marry me.”

Hoshi had to fight hard, not to splash the water in upset and desecrate the sacred tranquility of the _onsen_. Of all the bigotry in the world…

“Calm yourself here, Hoshi- _chan_ ,” Yuki Sato said gently. “Your sister will not cause you upset again and I will speak to your father.”

Hoshi looked up, her eyes filling with tears. Her beloved mother’s unexpected approval had moved her greatly.

“Thank you, mother,” she said, her voice breaking slightly with emotion.

=/\=

“Come!”

“Evening,” Malcolm said curtly as he entered. Trip chucked a bottle in Malcolm’s direction and the Brit caught it easily with one hand. The swing tops flew open and after raising the bottles in each other’s direction in salute they both took a healthy swig.

“So, how did you like your surprise?” the engineer asked with a grin.

“Well, since T’Pol showing up at exactly 1800 on a Friday isn’t exactly a surprise, I would hazard a guess that you refer to the recent reconfiguration of my terminal’s user interface?” Malcolm replied dryly and helped himself to one of the chairs while Trip flopped down on the bed.

“You’re not pissed off about the armory stunt, are you?”

“Are you kidding me, Trip,” Malcolm said with a rare chuckle. “A picture of Hoshi stark naked, hitting a class one target with an EM39? I nearly jizzed in my pants right away. Really creative way to do it within the rules, too. Although I’d suggest we keep it to a one-off performance?”

“No worries about that,” Trip assured him. “What’s your take on Phlox’s job.”

The Brit shook his head.

“It was never the most important thing to me how big her boobs were,” Malcolm said. “But she’s visibly happy with her herself, even a socially inept buffoon like me can see that. And bloody hell do they look splendid. I hadn’t expected them to be that big!”

“They are a tiny bit smaller than T’Pol’s – first hand experience,” Trip said, making a kneading motion with his hands. “But Hoshi’s almost on the skinny sight, so they look a bit bigger.”

“Figures that you couldn’t resist doing the practical test,” Malcolm snorted with amusement and took another swig from his beer. But Trip looked rather serious at him.

“Malcolm, actually, it was Hoshi who asked me to check them. She wasn’t really convinced until I assured her that they weren’t only looking right, but also _felt real_ from a man’s perspective. Frankly, from where I’m sitting there is more to this than just her being upset about her size. I think she’s been made fun of about them and for a long time if you ask me.”

He could see Malcolm nod knowingly.

“Her own sister,” he explained. “Hoshi is a genius and Mayumi has always been a beer short of a six pack in the intelligence department so she picked on Hoshi ever since she had bigger boobs at thirteen than her sister at sixteen. How puerile is that?”

“Probably the only thing she could beat Hoshi at,” Trip snorted. “Hell, she’s certainly in for a surprise.”

Malcolm chuckled at that remark.

=/\=

Hoshi pushed against the restraints, but she couldn’t even move the tiniest bit. Resisting the overpowering urge to scream in terror she looked around and noticed she was in a window-less room, most likely a basement of some kind and it was tiled from floor to ceiling. She realized she was strapped firmly to a biobed, only clad in her underwear.

She thought hard about ‘Malcolm’s tenets’ the rules of survival in an abduction scenario. He had hammered it into every officer’s brain from the early days of their mission.

_If you ever wake up in an unknown place, number one priority: collect as many details as possible about your surroundings. Eyes, ears, fingers – in that order._

Malcolm’s voice was crystal clear in her mind. She had done the visual check and closed her eyes to concentrate on the sounds. A faint whisper could be heard and the more she concentrated on it, it became clearer.

_… is this truly the correct female?… does not fit with the body dimensions in the human database…_

Vulcans, Hoshi realized, in fact all except one spoke with a pronounced _Xir’tan_ accent, an island continent in one of the two oceans on the planet. The odd man out was addressed as doctor Korat, _Na’Nam_ accent, most likely from _Ta’Raan_ city. Currently they were debating whether she could really be the Hoshi Sato they had been looking for as obviously her new boobs didn’t fit the description they had been going by.

 _Thank you, new tits,_ she thought sarcastically, but her thoughts were overridden by Malcolm’s voice.

_Remember: Eyes, ears, fingers – in that order._

Too bad the range was limited. The bloody strap was fixed not far above her wrists. She forced herself not to groan in pain as she had to bend her wrists close to breaking point when her finger tips reached around the edges of the biobed.

There was nothing on the left side, but she could sense what felt like a small metal plaque on the right side. Vulcans were obsessed with order, maybe it would be a manufacturer’s plaque? Tears welled up in her eyes as she willed her wrist past the point where it _really_ started to hurt. “Bingo!” She thought – it was an inventory embossment. Concentrating on an upside-down Vulcan symbol while fighting excruciating pain wasn’t easy, but she finally worked it out:

_VS detach UEA – V’Shar detachment, United Earth Embassy_

How obsessed does one have to be to label the inventory of the secret service?

_Second priority: Try to remember how you got there._

Somehow hearing Malcolm’s voice in her mind calmed it. There was little to remember about how she got here. She remembered kneeling in the _Dojo_ , listening to her father grumpily apologizing for Mayumi’s misconduct, conveniently omitting his own and suddenly… she knew that horrible feeling…

She closed her eyes and concentrated hard. Her eyes sprang open. _Matter transport!_

=/\=

A horrible whine from the terminal nearly deafened them and Malcolm tipped his bottle over as he ran to the desk. A priority one communication to his private coms address – only Hoshi had the necessary key code.

The screen came alive and an old Japanese man was bowing deep, in fact his face was touching the ground. Not bad for someone who looked like he had served under Emperor Hirohito. The Brit shoved these sarcastic thoughts aside when the man righted himself and he saw that he was in tears. For a Japanese man to show emotion this openly something bad must have had happened. He didn’t like the premonition the least bit.

“She was taken… Hoshi- _chan_ disappeared before my eyes. I found the message in her room,” the man said, well, _wailed_ to be brutally honest, but if he was who Malcolm thought he was, he had just watched his daughter being abducted.

“Sir, I know this is hard. Try to remain calm and only defend yourself if you are attacked directly, no matter what happens. We will be with you shortly. Expect three officers.”

The man nodded. It seemed like an odd thing to ask, but the old man had a polished and pulled-out _Katana_ lying next to him and it didn’t look like an ornament. Nothing would be more useless than rematerializing and then having your arm chopped off by a terrified old man.

Malcolm flipped open his communicator. “Commander T’Pol, we have a situation. Meet us in the armory at all haste.”

He took the reply while they were already sprinting out of the door.

=/\=

_Never ever give it away if you have found out something about your abductors. Play dumb. And make it as hard as possible for them to communicate._

Well, it didn’t look like they were experts in camouflage either, Hoshi thought. Face mask and surgeon cap to hide the ear tips – how creative. When the three Vulcans reached her biobed they taxed her for a moment before one of them spoke.

“Identify yourself! Are you Hoshi Sato, Ensign, Service registry number 7-8-4-9-0-1-2-7?”

The question was in human standard, impeccably free of any accent. A _Xir’tan_ native would never be able to pronounce ‘Hoshi’ so perfectly. That meant they were using a universal translator or anything similar. It would have been programmed for most contemporary languages. She needed one that had gone extinct before first contact…

The Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family had been entirely lost before twenty-fifty! There was a good chance the thing couldn’t even latch on to the grammar. After all a UT was only as good as it’s lingua matrix.

 _“Your wife reeks of elk,”_ she replied in Chukchi and the hapless device delivered gibberish to her abductors.

“Repeat,” the Vulcan ordered.

 _“Your reindeer herd is pitiful, and your wife stinks like a_ Koryak _.”_

“The device cannot determine the language,” the other non-doctor replied and she heard a very un-Vulcan undertone of frustration. From the sound of it, he was fairly young and probably new at this spy business.

=/\=

“Shouldn’t we alert Starfleet Security?” Trip asked while donning the combat armor that Malcolm had tossed him. But it only got him an irritated look from the Brit.

“Would you invite the blind to a fox hunt?” his friend shot back with a disdainful tone. “I’ll save you a seat at my court-martial.”

T’Pol was already suited up, as was Malcolm. Trip grabbed an EM39, but Malcolm waved him to put it back. “Signature is too easy to track. Take a CR45.”

“I’m not rated for that,” Trip said and he could see you that Malcolm lost patience with him.

“I’ll speak in your favor at _your_ court-martial. Get a move on!”

=/\=

Malcolm slammed the shuttle down earning himself a reproachful look from T’Pol through the visor of her combat helmet. He’d probably just ruined the results of several centuries of lawn-keeping, but this wasn’t the time to be sentimental. He preceded his companions out of the shuttle and motioned them to lock and load, just for the case that the old man had been used to lure them into a trap.

“My katana is secured, Malcolm- _san_ ,” the old man said, his voice still breaking as Malcolm edged closer to the entrance. He could see that Hoshi’s father – by now he was convinced he was – had turned on a ridiculous amount of lights, so it was clear that nobody else could be inside. The shadow would have been instantly visible through the semi-transparent walls of the ancient _dojo_. That old man was more than just a random Japanese grandpa.

“Sir, short and simple. How did she disappear?” he asked without wasting time on pleasantries. “Did it look like some sort of glitter?”

“ _Hai_ ”

“Vertical or horizontal?” he continued making the appropriate directional movements with his hands. “What color?”

“Vertical; starting in the middle of her body. It was bright green.”

“Vulcans,” Malcolm said dryly, which got him a furious look from T’Pol and he realized that it was perhaps not the cleverest idea to blame her race while she was present. Thankfully the combat gear hid her ears and eyebrows and the old man was too occupied to notice her origin.

“Anything?” he asked in her direction after T’Pol had stopped scanning for residue of ionized matter. 

“Either a very low geostationary orbit, or a destination here on Earth – direct transfer.”

He turned back to the dojo’s owner. “Where is the terminal that Hoshi used for her latest communication?”

“Follow me,” the man said and for someone who looked three-hundred years old he was quite agile, Malcolm noticed.

=/\=

Hoshi followed the Vulcan’s movements very carefully. After the three had taken a few more far-eastern insults they had trundled off. After god-knows-how-many minutes only one of them had returned – the older one from _Xir’tan._ He was slowly pacing the length of the room and had ditched his disguise.

“You are a Linguist, Ensign. It is a most impressive feat to disable our translating device. However, it is none that will be particularly helpful. In fact I would consider cooperating in your position. While Vulcans consider violence abhorrent, we _are_ prepared to use it if necessary.”

His monologue was transmitted in – yet again flawless – contemporary Russian, no doubt to give her the clue that they had at least worked out where the unknown language she had used was originating, although one could say that ‘Russia’ was a rather rough approximation.

“You appear somewhat impatient to further the proceedings,” she replied in a fair rendition of a _K’lan-ne_ colored _Xir’tan_ accent. She might have gotten a few vowel-transitions wrong, but he would get the clue that she knew exactly where he came from. So much was obvious from the almost imperceptible flinch of the man’s now visible eyebrows.

“Know this, human. You are indeed a most impressive specimen, but let this be the final warning. We are prepared to achieve our goal by all necessary means however distasteful they may be.”

_If you run out of options, relent and negotiate… offer yourself if it stands between death and survival._

If it had not been for the frequent flashes of Malcolm’s voice in her mind, she could not have maintained her stubborn defiance but this wasn’t the time to test the limits any further. Hoping that her father would have the presence of mind to search the guest room she was staying in, she played the last card.

“You have not even made the effort yet of telling me why you went to such lengths to abduct a lowly ensign, endangering the diplomatic relationship between Earth and Vulcan in the process. Neither have you asked me anything of importance, as my name is obviously already known to you.”

“Are you prepared to answer my questions?” the Vulcan asked and she could hear the impatience in his voice.

“I may, but as you can most likely imagine, a certain lessening of my discomfort might be a help in motivating me to consider your request.” She shot back, still using his local dialect.

“State your conditions,” the Vulcan ordered, looking straight ahead. She could see that she had him on the brink of losing control of his emotions. Well, having been able to wiggle her bottom and shifting her underpants aside to reveal just a hint of something that Vulcans were not normally allowed to see could have played a role in that. She felt like a slut, but anything that bought Malcolm some time was fair game right now. She knew enough about Vulcans to know that ‘by all means necessary however distasteful they may be’ was Vulcan for ‘you are going to be carried out here abased, humiliated and quite dead’.

“For unknown reasons the control over your emotions appears compromised. It disconcerts me as through warnings of our science officer I am quite aware of the dangers of such conditions,” she replied calmly, much more calmly than she felt. When had she become so good at play-acting? “I would prefer to speak to your fellow officer and no doubt your doctor Korat will have informed you by now that I have undergone a substantial medical procedure, so if you would allow me to apply the necessary acupressure in privacy by freeing my hands? Lest you want to attempt questioning a dead prisoner of course.”

She doubted that the Vulcan knew what acupressure was, but it sounded reasonably close to neuropressure, so he would assume it was the human equivalent.

She felt one of the four straps holding her down being released and her arms up to the shoulder were free to move.

“You have five minutes. Any attempt at escape or deception will be punished. If you don’t provide my colleague with the necessary answers within the hour, you shall regret your decision.”

With that final warning he walked off with what looked to her like quite a hurry. Very un-Vulcan, really.

=/\=

Soval stood from his chair when the door to his office was opened violently and he looked straight at the nozzles of three human pulse rifles.

“T’Pol?” he stammered in utter confusion, but it was one of the other two intruders who answered him.

“Where is it – the V’Shar detachment?”

Soval fought against the audible gasp that was threatening to give away his most profound confusion when he identified the second person as Charles – T’Pol’s desired mate – and judging by the accent the third person had to be Lieutenant Reed. Why had three of _Enterprise_ ’s officers decided to intrude on Vulcan sovereign territory by violent means?

“Lieutenant, there is no V’Shar detachment in this embassy,” he insisted, confused about the human’s suspicion. A building the outer walls of which consisted mostly of glass was hardly a place to hide operatives. But then he once had believed the High Command’s insistence that there was no surveillance station at the monastery at P’Jem. His niece would not take part in such drastic action without a very good reason, so he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“What about the basement?”

“We have no basement, Lieutenant,” he explained calmly. “This building has been erected on a solid basalt foundation.”

“You have one, two storeys deep,” the human replied. “That means you have a V’Shar detachment. Pray that nothing has happened to her or this place will be soaked in green blood,”

Soval had not even the time to process the aggressive emotions radiating from Lieutenant Reed as two security officers appeared in the door and targeted the humans. He had never seen them before. The human officer had been right!

The sound of two plasma pulses sounded and both Vulcans dropped to the ground – obviously dead – with large entry wounds on their foreheads. Soval desired not to know what the back of their heads looked like, considering that green brain tissue was slowly running down the wall.

“I’ll apologize later,” the human officer said with an unmistakable undertone of what Soval had learned to identify as sarcasm, although this instance seemed to be a rather extreme example.

Once the humans and T’Pol had left he pushed a button and spoke calmly first in Vulcan then repeating the message in Human standard.

“All Embassy personnel evacuate the building at all haste. This is not a drill. Evacuate the building immediately.”

=/\=

Hoshi fought down the nausea as she chucked aside her grey top. Five minutes might have sounded like a long time, but trying to remove a top from under a painfully firmly fastened strap was not exactly easy, even if her hands were relatively free now. So, she had unpacked her tits and shoved the underpants just a little more to the side to reveal her bare pussy. _Deal with that, young Vulcan,_ she thought grimly, but the truth was she felt like a dirty whore.

_Offer yourself if no other option exists. Psychological trauma can be treated – death is permanent._

She certainly understood the sick-as-a-dog look on Malcolm’s face as he had announced this particular tenet, But her thoughts were cut short by the younger Vulcan’s entry and no matter how dirty she felt, nothing was more grimly satisfying than seeing the look of utter shock on the young Vulcan’s face.

“W-what is your knowledge on the inappropriate conduct of Subcommander T’Pol, Ensign?”

She had never heard a Vulcan stutter before, but this was not the time to feel triumphant. She was letting go of her last bit of dignity just to survive and she wasn’t entirely sure it was worth it.

“I was laboring under the assumption that such questions are inappropriate to ask,” she replied “And I currently do not know of any Subcommander T’Pol.”

“She was transferred to the rank of Commander in the human Starfleet”, the Vulcan said, looking away from her.

“What charges are levied against her?” Hoshi asked approximating the man’s local dialect. “I have not known her to shame herself or anyone.”

“She has mated with a human,” the Vulcan said, staring right at her as he tirned around, his baser instincts stirred by her exposed physique.

In a mixture of anger, despair and shame she grabbed her underpants with her right hand and ripped them apart violently, baring herself completely.

“Does my physique excite you?” she growled in ancient Golic. “Do you not wish to feast on my flesh? Are you not warrior enough?”

She regretted her brazen move immediately as the out-of-control Vulcan howled and descended upon her, but mere meters before the raging alien reached her, he dropped to the floor, his head splayed open by a plasma shot.

“Don’t look at me!” Hoshi screeched.

=/\=

Trip ran into the chamber after Malcolm, who shot at everything that moved and then everything that didn’t. Hearing Hoshi’s blood curdling scream and seeing her stark naked he grabbed an unused privacy screen and ripped it off its hinges violently. He threw the plastic cover over Hoshi’s body.

The whole room lay in ruins when Malcolm had emptied the charge of his weapon. He watched the Brit stagger over to Hoshi. The ship’s security officer sank to his knees and Trip felt utterly numb when he saw another ‘first’. For the first time since they had known each other, he saw Malcolm cry helplessly.

 


End file.
